The Preliminary End of Discourse

Thoughts in light of the malicious attack on Charlie Kirk, by Hans J. Feiertag

Ultimately, an argumentative dispute with conflicting views is only possible through an illusion: the illusion of being able to resolve a conflict in thought through thought, i.e., logically. However, this is fundamentally impossible. Thought is only meaningful and substantial in partiality. Thought as a conflict-free whole is tautological, i.e., empty.

The very foundation of a society is its specific Alsob, living in a shared illusion, a withered and ever-dying idea that seeks to span all social conflicts, overarching them, entangling them, framing them, embracing them, constituting them, seemingly replacing them by making people forget the living conflicts or at least presenting them as solvable and surmountable.

This idea culminates in liberal society. It is nothing more than the illusory belief in the society-creating power of argument, thought, and logic. But what is timeless logic? “Logic is tied to the condition—assuming there are identical cases.” With this, Nietzsche had already destroyed everything that could be destroyed in logic—a complete annihilation. Logic exists only in the identical, i.e., in singularity, the unharmed God who is still everything in one, and as such is empty. God can only give himself Gehalt (substance) in dispersion and division, in that he faces himself in parts as a Gegenstand (as an opposite and opposing object).

The Logos is not the divine initial spark. For it was pure affect, will, and action. (Goethe's Faust knew it already: “I must translate it differently: In the beginning was the deed!”). The word, the thought only follows the deed, justifies it, defends it, urges it to be repeated—and this only in partiality and similarity, but not as identity.

Logic as a process is deduction, i.e., the creation of different expressions, or forms of content, without changing the content itself. It is not logical deduction that contributes to the actual content of a statement, but rather that content already exists pre-logically in the premises and assumptions. The actual conflict therefore never lies in the deduction, but in the premises from which logical conclusions are drawn, or in the deviation from logical deduction through the introduction of new content.

Conflicting premises cannot touch each other logically, and therefore cannot cancel or dissolve one another. Any friction through linguistic exchange is, in its effect, not logical but psychological. Language acts upon the opponent: it intimidates him, confuses him, distracts him—but it cannot strike him logically. Rather, the premise itself must be attacked, and thus the very foundation upon which the opponent stands. It is all he truly has. It resides prior to logic. The conflict becomes an existential confrontation that can find its ultimate conclusiveness only through the means of open violence. Corporeality—physical appropriation and displacement of space—is the final truth. In recollecting this premise, abstraction (distance) through thought is once again shortened, indeed dissolved. One returns. In short: only psychologically, and ultimately physically, can the parties have any real effect upon one another. For nothing can be decided logically.

Language-games are power-games. They cannot be about any truth beyond this perspectivity and particularity; rather, truth lies in the struggle of the incompatible parts. Of course the conflict is not absolute. After all, everything issues from a unifying origin. But just as no stream can return to its source, so we cannot go back to the peace of our primordial oneness (and even that oneness could not have been perfect, if it contained the longing for division and dispersion of which we are the result). At best we can form alliances, act in coalitions, but only in resistance to other partyings.

Liberalism had its time. It cannot be timeless and must occasionally let go. It will return, but it must now be allowed to depart. People have argued at one another too often and felt too often that their words no longer touch—that, in the fire of constant argument, too hard a shell has grown around them. Yet the waning discursive access to the other side also leaves a powerlessness that must be replaced. With what? The last resort—as always—will be bodily engagement, tangible assault; ultimately, war.